# For Better or Worse this week: Enlightening? Offensive? Realistic, even? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 26, 2007, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-better-or-worse-this-week-enlightening-offensive-realistic-even/409551 "2007-06-26T23:55:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Snooooopy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ee7513/32.png) [@Snooooopy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snooooopy)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2007, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-better-or-worse-this-week-enlightening-offensive-realistic-even/409551/41 "2007-06-27T21:10:35Z")
[QUOTE=Jodi] 2. It’s trite and unoriginal. She’s standing on the table and making a speech and then everyone who has thus far been mean to her magically sees the light and wild clapping breaks out. [/QUOTE] They are clapping because they are about to eat her. They like it when their entree has a little fight in her, you know? ---
**Author:** ![Jodi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/7feea3/32.png) [@Jodi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jodi)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2007, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-better-or-worse-this-week-enlightening-offensive-realistic-even/409551/42 "2007-06-27T21:34:00Z")
[QUOTE=Snooooopy] They are clapping because they are about to eat her. They like it when their entree has a little fight in her, you know? [/QUOTE] Ooh, shades of those little toothy guys in _Galaxy Quest_ – I like it! ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2007, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-better-or-worse-this-week-enlightening-offensive-realistic-even/409551/43 "2007-06-27T21:34:14Z")
[QUOTE=Snooooopy] They are clapping because they are about to eat her. [/QUOTE] [Brains! Brains!](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUGOZsahqq4) ---
**Author:** ![gulliver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/49beb7/32.png) [@gulliver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gulliver)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2007, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-better-or-worse-this-week-enlightening-offensive-realistic-even/409551/44 "2007-06-27T21:45:32Z")
[QUOTE=Qadgop the Mercotan] Routine for online, yes. It happens with less frequency in the printed versions of the strips. Or should. [/QUOTE] I mean she actually blinks. Somehow, it’;s animated when you mouse over a particular part of the frame, not that her eyes are drawn in the closed position. How would you get that blinking action in a printed version? If I flipped through the Sunday comics and Mrs. Lockhorn winked at me, well, I’m not sure how I’d react… ---
**Author:** ![gigi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a587f6/32.png) [@gigi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gigi)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2007, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-better-or-worse-this-week-enlightening-offensive-realistic-even/409551/45 "2007-06-27T22:19:06Z")
[QUOTE=gulliver] I mean she actually blinks. Somehow, it’;s animated when you mouse over a particular part of the frame, not that her eyes are drawn in the closed position. How would you get that blinking action in a printed version? If I flipped through the Sunday comics and Mrs. Lockhorn winked at me, well, I’m not sure how I’d react… [/QUOTE] 😉 He’s was being…ironical. ---
**Author:** ![BoBettie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4af34b/32.png) [@BoBettie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BoBettie)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2007, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-better-or-worse-this-week-enlightening-offensive-realistic-even/409551/46 "2007-06-27T22:27:18Z")
[QUOTE=gulliver] How would you get that blinking action in a printed version? If I flipped through the Sunday comics and Mrs. Lockhorn winked at me, well, I’m not sure how I’d react… [/QUOTE] Peyote? ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2007, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-better-or-worse-this-week-enlightening-offensive-realistic-even/409551/47 "2007-06-27T22:35:00Z")
[QUOTE=gulliver] I mean she actually blinks. Somehow, it’;s animated when you mouse over a particular part of the frame, not that her eyes are drawn in the closed position. How would you get that blinking action in a printed version? If I flipped through the Sunday comics and Mrs. Lockhorn winked at me, well, I’m not sure how I’d react… [/QUOTE] I said it happens with “less frequency” in the printed versions. Zero is definitely less frequent than the rate it happens in the online version. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Pixiesnix](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/898d66/32.png) [@Pixiesnix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pixiesnix)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2007, 4:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-better-or-worse-this-week-enlightening-offensive-realistic-even/409551/48 "2007-06-28T04:33:51Z")
When I read today’s strip, I rolled my eyes and gave up. _FBOFW_ is a lost cause. It’s careening merrily down the slip’n’slide of mediocrity into the gaping pothole of crappitude. Between the Elizabeth-centered soap opera and the Afterschool Special in the cafeteria, the whole thing looks like a bad day in daytime television. Just shoot the damn thing between the eyes, Johnston, and put us out of our misery. ---
**Author:** ![Rilchiam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/2bfe46/32.png) [@Rilchiam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rilchiam)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2007, 4:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-better-or-worse-this-week-enlightening-offensive-realistic-even/409551/49 "2007-06-28T04:47:39Z")
It’s perfectly ridiculous. April was born in 1991, and is now sixteen and a junior. Her classmates should all have been born between 1988 and 1992. As such, they would have been _conditioned, from the time they could talk_, to be tolerant. Kids’ TV programming teaches tolerance. Schools have anti-bullying policies. People file and win “hostile environment” lawsuits. Yes, some people are resistant to this; there will always be some percentage of mean people. But it can’t be that **no one** in that cafeteria except April ever once thought about how their words affect others, or realized that it’s not AOK to put down people who are different. This is a lesson that doesn’t need to be taught, because it would have already **been** taught, consistently, over many years. And again, I refuse to believe that these kids would not have the faculty on their side. ---
**Author:** ![Rubystreak](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Rubystreak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rubystreak)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2007, 5:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-better-or-worse-this-week-enlightening-offensive-realistic-even/409551/50 "2007-06-28T05:07:40Z")
My classroom at school is next to the resource room. The only kids who make fun of the non-mainstreamed kids, ie., the kids who have to be in their own classes, are each other. Regular ed kids pretty much stay out of it. I had one student this year with pretty severe CP. He talked kind of like Shannon, haltingly, and used a wheelchair. The the only kid who made fun of him was a kid worse off than him, intelligence-wise (he’s perfectly average, she was not, but she was mainstreamed too). She got pretty roundly condemned for it by her own peers. We’re talking 12 year olds. In a local school a few years ago, two kids with Down’s Sydrome were elected prom king and queen. So this storyline seems especially glurgey and full of crap to me. It’s not that kids aren’t mean, just, not this way. I’d really like to know what disability causes a cleft palate, halting speech (IME people with cleft palates do not speak slowly, but can be hard to understand), inability to read at all, and low IQ. It sounds like a made-up constellation of disorders, aka Plot Device. ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2007, 5:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-better-or-worse-this-week-enlightening-offensive-realistic-even/409551/51 "2007-06-28T05:25:03Z")
[QUOTE=Qadgop the Mercotan] I said it happens with “less frequency” in the printed versions. Zero is definitely less frequent than the rate it happens in the online version. 😉 [/QUOTE] Yes, but then you went on to say “it should” [happen with less frequency in the dead tree versions]. Implying that it _doesn’t_ happen less frequently in your newspaper. Is this a Mercotanish thing that you get from eating too much neutronium, or should we blame flashbacks from the time there was ergot contamination in the _lembas_? 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Rilchiam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/2bfe46/32.png) [@Rilchiam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rilchiam)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2007, 5:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-better-or-worse-this-week-enlightening-offensive-realistic-even/409551/52 "2007-06-28T05:57:21Z")
[QUOTE=Rubystreak] I’d really like to know what disability causes a cleft palate, halting speech (IME people with cleft palates do not speak slowly, but can be hard to understand), inability to read at all, and low IQ. It sounds like a made-up constellation of disorders, aka Plot Device. [/QUOTE] For what it’s worth, Stephanie, Shannon’s real-life counterpart, [does not stutter or speak slowly.](http://www.fbofw.com/features/shannon/images/radio_spot.mp3) She slurs a bit, but she talks as fast as anyone else. ISTM that the ellipses were originally a way of demonstrating that she does not enunciate perfectly, not that she talks slow. But somewhere along the line, that became the interpretation accepted by Lynn’s crew (she doesn’t draw the strip alone any more, for the last few years). Hence the remark last week about Shannon taking a long time to tell April about the telethon. Either way, every time Shannon appears, we have to be told that she’s different. But it’s wrong for other characters to notice that she’s different. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2007, 6:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-better-or-worse-this-week-enlightening-offensive-realistic-even/409551/53 "2007-06-28T06:09:44Z")
I was kinda expecting the special needs girl to hold up a sign saying “ONION”. [sub]yes, I’m going to Hell…[/sub] ---
**Author:** ![lawoot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/35a633/32.png) [@lawoot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lawoot)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2007, 6:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-better-or-worse-this-week-enlightening-offensive-realistic-even/409551/54 "2007-06-28T06:23:04Z")
When are they going to get back to the important storylines - Like April getting sloppy drunk and making out with her boyfriend (which is more of a social life than ELIZABETH ever had). ---
**Author:** ![D\_Odds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/d_odds/32/2882_2.png) [@D\_Odds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/D_Odds)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2007, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-better-or-worse-this-week-enlightening-offensive-realistic-even/409551/55 "2007-06-28T15:11:43Z")
[Dear Abby](http://news.yahoo.com/s/ucda/20070627/lf_ucda/friendshorrorstorieskeepwomanoutofdoctorsoffice) must be a fan. > [@](#): > > DEAR ABBY: I am an 11-year-old girl in sixth grade. My problem is there’s this girl, “Stacey,” who is in Special Ed who gets picked on every day. My friends pick on her a lot, and it makes me disgusted because Stacey doesn’t have any control over how she was born. > > Today, my friends and I were playing a game to see who could get the most hugs, and I went up to Stacey who was sitting outside alone like always and gave her a hug. Then my friends started giving her hugs, and it made me so happy to see the look on her face! She was smiling with pure joy. > > Abby, if you put this in your column, could you tell people that just giving a hug to someone who doesn’t normally get one might make their day? Also, can you tell me how to get my friends to stop bullying her? Thanks a lot! Coincedence? I think not!\* I can provide many witnesses who will testify to that! ---
**Author:** ![gigi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a587f6/32.png) [@gigi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gigi)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2007, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-better-or-worse-this-week-enlightening-offensive-realistic-even/409551/56 "2007-06-28T17:03:15Z")
I have to say I hugged about…zero people when I was in sixth grade. Not something that happened on our playground. ---
**Author:** ![Anne\_Neville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Anne\_Neville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anne_Neville)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2007, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-better-or-worse-this-week-enlightening-offensive-realistic-even/409551/57 "2007-06-28T17:23:25Z")
[Today’s strip](http://www.fborfw.com/strip_fix/archives/002541.php) was… puke puke puke puke puke. ---
**Author:** ![Sarahfeena](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sarahfeena/32/519_2.png) [@Sarahfeena](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sarahfeena)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2007, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-better-or-worse-this-week-enlightening-offensive-realistic-even/409551/58 "2007-06-28T17:33:09Z")
[QUOTE=Anne Neville] [Today’s strip](http://www.fborfw.com/strip_fix/archives/002541.php) was… puke puke puke puke puke. [/QUOTE] OMG, I thought it couldn’t get worse (not to make a bad pun on the name of the strip). That is one of the most glurgy things I have ever seen. No wonder I don’t read the comics anymore, if this is the best there is out there (and I’m thinking it probably is). ---
**Author:** ![straight\_man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/straight_man/32/3027_2.png) [@straight\_man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/straight_man)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2007, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-better-or-worse-this-week-enlightening-offensive-realistic-even/409551/59 "2007-06-28T20:34:32Z")
[QUOTE=lowbrass] Yeah, that strip seems rather bland and trite, but that’s par for the course. It’s _always_ bland. It’s a Canadian strip, right? Is everyone here comparing their high school experience with that portrayed in the strip Canadian? On the occasions I happen to read _For Better or For Worse_, I am always struck by the fact that the characters in the community in the strip behave nothing at all like the people who live in my real-life community. I always figured it was a Canada thing. [/QUOTE] It most certainly is no such thing – and, having classmates from all over the world, I’m confident that the behaviour of the various characters does not match with _any_ region of the world. That’s really the core of why FBofW has gone from better to worse; it’s a behavior-driven comic (both in its plot and it humour), and the characters no longer behave like real people. ---
**Author:** ![Sarahfeena](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sarahfeena/32/519_2.png) [@Sarahfeena](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sarahfeena)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2007, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-better-or-worse-this-week-enlightening-offensive-realistic-even/409551/60 "2007-06-28T20:41:25Z")
[QUOTE=straight man] It most certainly is no such thing – and, having classmates from all over the world, I’m confident that the behaviour of the various characters does not match with _any_ region of the world. That’s really the core of why FBofW has gone from better to worse; it’s a behavior-driven comic (both in its plot and it humour), and the characters no longer behave like real people. [/QUOTE] I agree. I was in HS in the 80s, before kids were really taught to respect diversity and all of that. I also went to a school that was kind of known in the area for being relatively snotty. I never saw any special-needs kids being picked on. Geeks, yes, but not people with real problems. Even the kids in my HS wouldn’t stoop that low. It just doesn’t seem realistic. Maybe in juinor high, not HS. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-better-or-worse-this-week-enlightening-offensive-realistic-even/409551.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-better-or-worse-this-week-enlightening-offensive-realistic-even/409551.md?page=4)